- Title:
- Minerva
- Object name(s):
- Sculpture; British
- Brief description:
- At the eastern end of the Gallery, overlooking the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields, is a statue of Minerva, the goddess of wisdom.It was originally designed by the British neoclassical sculptor, John Flaxman, as a seated figure of Britannia, brandishing a spear and shield, to appear on Marble Arch, designed as a ceremonial entranceway by John Nash. Flaxman was chosen to provide the commemorative sculptural decoration, but after his death in 1826 this work was divided between his former pupil Edward Hodges Baily, Charles Rossi and Richard Westmacott. Work started in 1827 but was halted after the death of George IV and then scaled back after 1831, when the new king, William IV, in a cost-cutting exercise, got rid of its sculptural elements. These were repurposed at Buckingham Palace and the National Gallery.Now blank, Minerva’s shield originally depicted the head of Lord Nelson, to commemorate his victory over Napoleon at Trafalgar. Baily transformed Britannia into Minerva by removing Nelson from the shield. The balustrade over the east front had to be strengthened to support the statue’s nine-ton weight.
- Collection:
- National Gallery
- Accession date:
- 2019-12-04
- Date - earliest / single:
- 2019
- Date - latest:
- 2019
- Credit line:
- Commissioned by the Office of Works for the Marble Arch, and installed on the Gallery in 1834
- Current location:
- Gallery Exterior: East Front
- Current reproduction location:
- 3/857/303/44/mid_H-0216-00-000006.jpg
- Material:
- Portland stone
- Object name:
- Sculpture; British
- Object production date:
- by 1830, altered about 1834
- Date - earliest / single:
- 1830
- Date - latest:
- 1834
- Object production person:
- John Flaxman
- Person's birth date:
- 1755-07-06
- Person's death date:
- 1826-12-09
- Object production person:
- Edward Hodges Baily
- Person's birth date:
- 1788-03-10
- Person's death date:
- 1867-05-22
- Object production place:
- 7 Buckingham Street, Fitzroy Square
- Object production place:
- 8 Percy Street
- Other number:
- H216
- Other number type:
- object number
- Other number:
- 0UXE-0008-0000-0000
- Other number type:
- PID
- Other number:
- H216
- Other number type:
- display number
- Other number:
- R114
- Other number type:
- Previous Object Number
- Other number:
- h2216
- Other number type:
- sort number
- Responsible department/section:
- Contextual Collection
- Right note:
- To encourage the use and reuse of the National Gallery's collection data, they are released under the following dedications and licences: Structured data (as opposed to narrative texts) are released under a Creative Commons Zero dedication (CC0): https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/. Descriptions, notes and all other narrative text content are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence (CC BY): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Images are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 licence (CC BY-NC-ND): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
Persistent shareable link for this record: https://museumdata.uk/objects/69b85d91-b37d-34e2-98c7-1b714cb91a3d
Use licence for this record: CC BY
Attribution for this record: https://museumdata.uk/objects/69b85d91-b37d-34e2-98c7-1b714cb91a3d, National Gallery, CC BY
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